The Xmas revelry is behind us, and it's onto 2018!​With the recent reveal of new minis for the Nurgle faction in Warhammer Age of $igmar, and the Malign Portents teasing us almost daily, it looks like the year is already full steam ahead.Next week, to start off 2018, we have some bundles for The Hobbit - the Erebor & Dale Battle Company, Arnor Battle Company and the Fiefdoms Battle Company. These are all a mix of plastic and resin models and have the usual price point for The Hobbit minis from Games Workshop. The recent release of the Middle-earth™ Strategy Battle Game: Battle Companies has certainly spurred some interest in the universe for sure!There's also some new books next week - with everyone's favourite pretty Primarch, Fulgrim getting his own tome with Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix (Hardback) . I understand his tips on proper hair maintenance and moisturizing are amaze-balls! Meanwhile, everyone's favourite blue dudes have Farsight: Crisis Of Faith (Paperback) - maybe the Tau version of the Horus Heresy... of sorts!Next week is also White Dwarf week and it seems like Nurgle are going to feature.... we really should count up the amount of issues of White Dwarf with Nurgle featuring prominently. It has to be over 40%! There will also be some more Maligned Portents content - well you'd hope so because by then it should have been revealed. If the preview is anything to go by, expect skeletons... a lot of skeletons! Was really hoping for Slaanesh, but it's looking more and more like faction champions vs Undead.

There's been quite a bit of hobbying going on here at Beardy Hammer HQ - been doing a bit of work on some NPCs, some Necromunda and also a rethink about one of the War Hounds units and how they would look as well as some Battlescribe!I know, it's all a bit airy-fairy, but hope to have an update pretty soon!

So the year of pre-orders draws to a close with nothing for next week! Unfortunately, no shocking preview of next year, no single figure that leaves us guessing what new faction it could be from and where the universe goes from here - it ends with possibly the most over exposed faction Games Workshop have ever released - the Stormcast! Lord-Celestant Gavriel Sureheart is in stores today - a dude sporting Girly-man's head on a single pose premium-priced mini. He'd cool in an army, but no alternate head, no alternate weapon option PLUS Age of $igmar pricing? Meh!There is of course the Sly Marbo mini going on sale on the 26th of December - rumours persist this is an in store only release with the proper figure coming out mid-2018. Now will they be the same and will they be resin or plastic?

Having had recent inspiration to continue with the XIIth Legion War Hounds, I've decided to finish the Breachers/ Heavy Infantry squad. Frankly I find them pretty hard to pose behind that big shield, so trying to find interesting poses has been a challenge - his guy, however, came up a treat! As with a few of the others, I used the Death Guard torsos to make them look bulkier and the addition of the Mechanicus head seems to work nicely too. The War Hounds icon on the shield is from Pop Goes The Monkey.on Shapeways. Notice the Umbra Patter Bolter as well - a little salute back to Rogue Trader era Space Marines

It's a pretty small week coming up, with all of it being Games Workshop's new love for all things Easy To Build!Lets start off with the "good guys", the Easy To Build Primaris Redemptor Dreadnought and the Easy To Build Primaris Aggressors which only give you one weapon option and limited posability, but does save you some cash!On the Nurgle side of the equation. there's the seriously ugly Easy to Build Lord Felthius & Tainted Cohort - probably the worst of the Nurgle releases. That being said, have a look at the guy in the Cataphractii armour. - not only is he actually a nice looking mini, he doesn't fit in with the others. I wonder where he came from because I doubt he was originally in this set! Then there's the Easy To Build Myphitic Blight-hauler which is pretty cute and really quite cheap. Thinking of getting one of these to kitbash into a Mechanicum automata of some sort - just cut out the middle and away you go! Great for the price!Next week also sees the return of the Citadel Combat Cards game. This is the Space Marines vs Chaos set and frankly card games belong with Pokemon and Magic...​-No Codex this week, so looks like Tau will be next year which is pretty crappy, frankly! Just release one a week - it's not hard, most of them are copy paste anyway with old artwork! Honestly, Games Workshop give with one hand and take away with the other; "we're all about the community" BUT "oh just wait until you can play your army in 8th edition, oh and the Indexes aren't real anymore!". Not cool!-Now here's the rub; Games Workshop are having an internal conversation about whether they are a games company or a miniatures company - could these Easy To Build sets be a way to see if the audience will accept them? The price of the Primaris minis are outrageous - in Australia, the Primaris Aggressors are almost $30 per mini! So we're wondering if Games Workshop are testing the waters by charging high prices for the multi-part minis and then releasing these Easy To Build ones at a lower price to see what the market wants. Are they acclimatizing us to "cheap" toys for a future where the hobbyist is less part of their market? Or will they have a two-tiered pricing structure and do both? Curious to see where this goes!

With the popularity of Necromunda, Zone Mortalis in the Horus Heresy, Star Saga, and even Space Hulk, the need for some really good terrain that is modular and also not too expensive has been missing for some time. Where Forge World make their own resin tiles, they can be inflexible and are also very expensive if you want to make a large board, so there needs to be another way!Thankfully, OverDose Terrain Studio have come up with a great MDF alternative which is cheap & quick to build!We purchased a number of the corridor sets from Scorched Earth Store(who make these under license from the Israeli designers) on Etsy to test them out, and final product has to be the most straight forward build and quality product we've seen for a while.

We bought the Corridor Corner, the Corridor Straight with Door and theCorridor Junction.They are all flat packed and who sheets of MDF per set. The instructions don't have pictures, and are really car guidelines rather than actual instructions.From unpacking to the section being finished took about half an hour and was really easy.

The finished section is nicely detailed, with thin panel lines on the walls and hexagonal patterning on the floor. There are also holes in the supports in the corners for 1/8 magnetsThe above pictures only have the wall panels dry-fitted in, and as you can see they are snug - a good sign this has been well designed.

The first thing that impressed me about the finished section was the size of it. As you can see above, the walls are close to 3-men high which if you want to use dreadnoughts or even large Tyranid creatures, would be excellent. In comparison to the Forge World Zone Mortalis tiles, the walls are almost twice the height giving you a real feel of enclosure.

++ Verdict ++

As you can tell, we're impressed with these sets - really impressed!Ideally this weekend we'll be able to give them a coat of Rustoleum (to seal the MDF or the paint just soaks into the wood) and then get some paint on them.From what we have seen of the rest of the range, the ability of the OverDose Terrain Studios product is super flexible allowing you to add rooms behind doors, or corridors, basically whatever you like!If you like your dungeon crawler games, or are part of the large Zone Mortalis community amongst the 30K crew, then these are well worth your while. There may be other sellers in your area, but for us Scorched Earth did the trick nicely.

Last week we had the first of the original Angels of Death Legions, this week we get the second - the Emperor's First, the Dark Angels.Similarly to last week's release, this based around the new Codex, with the only new miniature being a Lieutenant(who ever thought we'd see that rank back again?) The brand spanking new Codex is also here and in both Robed Emo Versionand normal But My Dad Doesn't Love Meflavour. As last week, the deluxe version has no extras. There are of course some themed dice and someone at GW doesn't know that the Dark Angels use Imperial Gothic numbering for all their ranks, so we are left with having to count up the number of swords for every dice roll. This is stupid! What's going to happen when we get the Slaanesh dice - count the dildos on each side? At least I don't have to buy them now!Dark Angels also get some Data Cards and the only other new miniature-related release this week in the form of a Dark Angels Primaris Upgrade Sprue. It's telling that both this week and last week that the normal Space Marine Upgrade Spruesor the excellent Ravenwing Upgrade weren't given a spotlight.​Meanwhile, in repackaged minis news, there are Primaris Intercessors, Hellblasters and Aggressors sets, which is basically the normal Primaris sets with an Upgrade sprue. Primaris are still criminally expensive!In the world of The Hobbit, we have two new sets - The Lords of Erebor: Thror, The Last King Under The Mountain & Thrain and Master of Lake-Town(who looks nothing like Stephen Fry).There are of course things other than minis - with the release of the Renegades of Elysia audio drama, two Fabius Bile books, Primgenitor (Book 1) andClonelord(Book 2). Is this where Chaos gets Primaris Marines, or are the Primaris in the ranks of the Space Marines the new Horus Heresy? Only time will tell...-I had written this whole thing on Dark Angels, but the internet swallowed it, so maybe that's for another day!

Necromunda has been taking up a lot of time here with the Merchant Guild Enforcers being only one model away from a gang - but of course distractions happen and this on in the form of a Goliath conversion. Not being a huge fan of the Goliaths, we realised that their bulk and spikes could be used for greater things, and nothing says spikes like Khorne!Taking the body and one arm from the Goliath kit and then the head, chest plate and another arm from the Khorne Blood Warriors in the Age of SIgmar Starter Set, we were set!Keeping the palette very restricted, it's metallics, black and red, with a touch of green for contrast!It turns out that GW are coming out with a Khorne Cultist list, so look out for Forge World conversion kits next year some time on would think!

The Blood Angels Space Marine Chapter have been there from the beginning of Warhammer 40,000. Alongside the Dark Angels and Ultramarines they were pretty much most people's first impression of what a Space Marine was. They've gone through a lot of stylistic changes over the year - the coloured helmets came about in the 90s, they went from bright red, to terracota to orange back to red and they're still around - now with added Primaris Marines and a brand new Codex. The Codex itself comes in two flavours, Nosferatu's Posing Pouch Collector's Edition and the standard. Unlike the Imperial Guard, there's at least some new minis in this release - a Blood Angels Primaris Lieutenantand the new Blood Angels Upgrade set for Primaris Marines. There are some reboxings with Blood Angels Upgrade Sets in them - Hellblasters, Intercessors and Aggressors. As is the way, the promise of Blood Angels dice was awesome - the reality is somewhat disappointing, with blood drops instead of numbers - that's not going to get annoying - and of course the Data Cards, which could disappear quite quickly!-Meanwhile, in books, Warmasterstarring everyone's favourite Gaunt's Ghost leader who also appears in The Founding, a Gaunt's Ghost Omnibus which collects the first trilogy. Meanwhile, a very cool book (which should probably come out next week) is Angels of Caliban, which centres around the Primarch of the Dark Angels and hopefully shows him for the total idiot he is.

Now there are also a bunch of Blood Bowl and Hobbit releases next week - so check them out below too!

Merchant Guild Enforcers - Champion with Heavy Stub Cannon, Trooper with Autogun, Leader with Power Sword and Bolter, Trooper with Shotgun & Trooper with Special Weapon

Necromunda initially didn't grab us too much back in the day, but then after seeing the new one it really did and it just wouldn't let go!! The scenery, the minis, the setting.... eeek!! Budget collapse.So we grabbed the rule book from the game and had a read, and despite the amazingly cool Forge World Beastmanmodel, and the fact Squats, Eldar and Beastmen were all mentioned as being GUESTS in the spire of the Imperial Governor of Necromunda (and doesn't that open up so interesting fluff), it raised an idea which quickly started to form and I just had to start it.The Adeptus Arbites, the military police of the Imperium have always had a strong presence in the Necromunda world, so what about other paramilitary groups? Well the Merchant Guild are a powerful group of organisations who sometimes hire the gangs of Necromunda (especially Orlocks) to transport their supplies, but surely they would have some kind of troops, and since they are hunting around in the Underhive for lost archeotech, then surely those forces would come into conflict with the more famous Houses we see depicted in the Necromunda game.So the idea grew legs, and 5 days later the Merchant Guild Enforcers are really growing on me!Yes, these don't exist in the canon, BUT they can be built using the PDF sheet we shared with you last week and they're fun! Have a few other ideas boiling away too...-There's more Troopers (Gangers) to come so the flamer guy can be included, plus it would be great to get to the 1500 points. Tell you what, you can have a fair few for that price.

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In a time before 40k, there was a band of men and women who took part in gaming without the corporate sensibilities of today. Take a step back with us and also look upon the future through wizened eyes and curious ponderings of The Beardy Hammer!